Doug's law*(a.k.a. Doug's rule of free digital
storage analogies) is an Internet adage that asserts
that "As a VAF online discussion grows longer, the
probability of a suggestion of VAF hosting terabytes of
everyone’s images and videos for free and forever,
approaches one"; that is, if an online discussion
(regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough,
eventually someone will suggest that if VAF hosted terabytes
of imagery from thousands of people, their problems would be
solved and they could get back to the business of wondering
why their ‘lawnmower for sale’ classified listing got
deleted.

In usage, when a ‘Why won’t Doug host terabytes of
stranger’s imagery’ suggestion is made, the thread is
considered finished and whoever made the initial reference
loses whatever debate is in progress. The first reply of ‘Doug’s
Law!’ scores extra points.

;^)

PS: In all seriousness,
there are a
LOT of places to host your own images online for very
little $$$.

Bottom Line Up Front:
You host the image somewhere online and use the
button to insert it in your post.
You are responsible for hosting your own pictures and videos online,
but there are plenty of options in the links below, all of which are
very affordable.
My
pics online cost me $3.99/mo
for unlimited storage. Give up (1) cup of coffee a month and
you can do the same.

Note 'Doug's Law' at right..... ;^)

In More Detail:A few folks occasionally ask why I don't
host pictures or videos here, and why instead I choose to have the
person taking the picture or shooting a video be responsible for
their own hosting somewhere else. I lay out my thinking on
this page. First though, let's start with a question:

Q: How much money do you think YouTube
has made
hosting people's videos 'for free'? Don't forget to take into
account the commercials
charged to businesses that are tacked on to the beginnings of millions and millions of clips
for over a billion users?

A: YouTube has never made a profit (sources),
and that's with over a BILLION customers watching paid
commercials. With a 'B'.

Translation: Nothing claimed to be 'free' is
ever free online, and you can't make money hosting 'free' stuff.
Heck, I can barely keep this site financially afloat as it is in its
lean format,
so those expecting me to host the images for nearly 25,000 people
need to understand it would
break my family financially regardless of the business model used.
I've thought about this off and on for the past
15 years, trying to
make it work. Since before YouTube existed.

And guess what? YouTube is experimenting
with charging money to watch some of the videos. "In
May 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program to begin offering some
content providers the ability to charge $0.99 per month or more for
certain channels, but the vast majority of its videos would remain
free to view."

Having said all that, I model the front page of
VAF a little bit after the Drudge Report. I spotlight those RV
stories whether they be on YouTube, or a Flickr photo album, or of a
person's blog build site showing some build progress, etc. It
allows the initial creator of the content to use whatever platform,
medium or device to showcase their work they want to. It
rewards the free marketplace. Back to the Drudge Report,
as this article says "it sends people away to keep them coming
back". Doing things this way allows me to a) keep the site
relatively small, lean and quick....and b) most importantly to my
family....profitable. That last bit is really saying
something, as my target audience is about a 1/53,000ths that of the
Drudge Report (my
ranking).

That's no accident. I'll mention above
again (read
it)....it lays out why, in the author's opinion, the Drudge
Report is one of the best designed sites on the web. I agree
100%. If I had to pay even a single employee to help me run
this thing, it wouldn't work financially. It's that close.

You're going to have to be responsible for your
own pictures, and there is an upside doing it this way. It'll
cost you roughly a dime a day to host your pictures and videos
online somewhere - for example SmugMug.com costs $3.99/mo for
UNLIMITED disk space. I host thousands of pictures and videos
in a SmugMug.com account myself. Backups of all my family's
iPhone photos and videos, video tours of our house in case of fire,
etc. All in private folders that only I can see. Other
photos for the world to see in other, public folders. I have
total control over it. It's WELL worth the money just for
peace of mind.

But guess what? I have another copy of
all the 'important' pictures on a different website just in case.

It's a cup of coffee each month. That's
the amount we're talking about.

There are
many
photo-sharing websites online and just about anything will work,
but as with everything in life you get what you pay for.
'Free' sites aren't free, so spending $20/yr for a high
capacity, high res photo sharing account somewhere is the smart move.
Thank goodness these things exist, because the last thing in the world I want to be
responsible for is the pictures from ~25,000+ people!!! I work
hard enough now, and don't want to add THAT headache to the pile!
Every now and then I'll get an email along the lines of I *should*
be hosting my own pictures, that it's my responsibility to take care
of these images forever, even after the original poster passes on.
I would ask those folks to consider just how much disk space that
would require (the pictures uploaded by over ~24,000 users), what
that might cost to host, and what effort it would take to manage.
MUCH more than the money coming in would pay for, I can assure you
that!

Related: Do you know how many
Facebook users die daily?
Ten thousand (428 every hour). My point is that users come
and go in all forms of social media, they live and die.
Nothing is forever. It's life. If you see a picture you
really like, please save a copy to your local drive.

So hopefully now you see why I have
folks host their pictures elsewhere. It's your choice to host
them on a 'free' site that may or may not stick around, or pay to
have them hosted for decades. It's the same reason I don't
host videos. Or podcasts. It would take up HUUUUUGGGGEEE
amounts of both disk space and bandwidth, which would cost me money
I don't have.

Those that say 'disk space and
bandwidth are nearly free', I respectfully disagree.

OK, so how to insert a picture into a forum
post:Pick
a photo sharing site, and once you've uploaded your picture use the embed image button
in the
forums to display it.

Occasionally a photo hosting site
will go out of business or will change something internally, so if a
thread full of pictures is important/meaningful to you, you might want to
get a copy on your local drive for
backup purposes. It happens. It's capitalism at work. A recent example is Google absorbing
Picasa (they bought it) into their Google Photos product (2016
story). While the pictures aren't going away, some of the
embedded pics might break.

2019 Update:
The www.ExperCraft.com
builder log website went offline for the time being. Like
I said earlier, it's a good idea to keep a LOCAL copy of all of
your data and to not depend on some other company's servers to
host your stuff forever. Storage sites come and go...

Embedding a picture in a
post:

In
your photo sharing site, look for
the 'direct link to image' URL, or something similar to that. This is
the address you will copy/paste into the forums. Tip:
You can paste the image URL into your browser address window to
see if it's going to work before you try it in the forums.

While replying to or creating
a thread look for the 'Insert Image' icon
.
Click on the icon where you want your pic to be.

A user prompt box will appear.
Put your cursor in the text box and paste the address from your photo
sharing site. Click 'OK' to embed the image.

Tips:

I get my text and picture all squared away using Notepad before
copy/pasting it into a forum post. I keep a little notepad doc
open on my desktop all the time with little pieces of text that I
use often. One section has a few [IMG] tags that I can drop in
a photo URL between, and insert some descriptive text above/below. Wrapping [IMG] and [/IMG] tags
around the picture link is what the 'embed pic' button does - you
can also do it manually is the point I'm trying to make.

Making the
image around 900 pixels wide or less preserves the proper word wrapping best
on most monitors.

If you
have a 'build log' type thread with many pictures of your
project in it, and you want a backup in case your photo
sharing site goes out of business someday, you can bring up
the thread in question and select Thread Tools,
Show Printable Version, then select File/Save As......or
'Print' to a PDF or XPS file depending on your browser.

v/r,
dr

PS: As a parallel regarding those
who use online build log sites.....if you think that data is
there forever, I would beg you to get a backup
every so often.